Consumers shop across a variety of platforms having varied experiences. For example, a consumer may cross shop multiple merchants including a variety of online merchants and physical stores. The consumer experience while shopping at the merchant locations and various merchant store types is typically dependent on the merchant. The consumer has little to no input regarding the content provided online or the in-store experience with the merchant.
Furthermore, there is little to no continuity between the varied consumer experiences. A consumer may visit a shopping mall location for their favorite merchant only to return home and visit the merchant website later. The consumer typically has no way to apply any context from the on-site merchant visit to the subsequent on-line visit. Similarly, the consumer usually has no way to apply context from a first merchant website to a second merchant web site. The lack of contextual experiences may leave a consumer to sift through irrelevant and/or unwanted information such as product promotions and search results.
Some web sites rely on cookies to promote products from websites previously visited by consumers. However, those cookies and websites typically have no integration with in-store experiences. Those websites also lack consumer control and transparency. Additionally, the cookie information is typically used to provide an advertisement such as a banner that is separate from the experience of the merchant website. That is, the cookie information may influence the advertisements presented to a consumer on the periphery of a website, but the cookie information may not influence the actual content of a merchant web site such as products presented, search results, recommendations, etc.